Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes

This page summarizes what some editors believe are the typical outcomes of past AfD discussions for some commonly nominated subjects.

This page is not a policy or guideline, and previous outcomes do not bind future ones. The community's actual notability guidelines are listed in the template at the right. Notability always requires verifiable evidence, and all articles on all subjects are kept or deleted on the basis of sources showing their notability, not their subjective importance or relationship to something else. All articles should be evaluated individually on their merits and their ability to conform to standard content policies such as Verifiability and Neutral point of view.

As guidelines and actual practice change, this page should be updated to reflect current outcomes.

Avoid over-reliance on citing these "common outcomes" when stating one's case at Articles for Deletion. While precedents can be useful in helping to resolve notability challenges, editors are not necessarily bound to follow past practice. When push comes to shove, notability is demonstrated by the mustering of evidence that an article topic is the subject of multiple instances of non-trivial coverage in trustworthy independent sources.

This page simply attempts to summarize Wikipedia's common daily practice with respect to deletion debates. If you feel that an outcome common to articles like the one you are discussing does not apply, then give a common-sense or guidelines-based reason why it shouldn't apply. Avoid weak or illogical arguments, such as "Notability is only an optional guideline" or "We always keep these articles".

You can use the template {{Outcomes}} to link to this section.

A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. However, there is still a lot of debate on notability.

• Companies are not kept on a basis of how much revenue or how many employees they have. See WP:BIG.
• Blatant advertising pages have been subject to speedy deletion.
• Products that have been planned, but not created yet, are generally deleted. See WP:CRYSTAL. However, exceptions have included "future-tech" items which already have substantial referencing behind the fundamental concept, such as fusion reactors, and prominent products in development (e.g. the next version of a computer operating system) for which well-sourced product updates are released on a relatively regular basis.
• Companies reported as significant subjects of news coverage are usually sufficiently notable.
• Generally, companies that are included in major stock indices such as S&P 500 Index or FTSE 100 Index will have sufficient in-depth independent coverage for notability.
• Local retailers and service merchants (franchises or individually owned) are generally deleted, with exceptions, including businesses with particular historical significance (e.g. the first motel), those centered around a major historical event, or tourist attractions.

• Religions, religious denominations and sects are almost always treated as presumptively notable and kept provided there is reliable source evidence of their existence and they represent more than a handful of affiliated congregations or places of worship.
• Individual parishes, congregations, temples and other places of worship are not generally kept unless they satisfy specific criteria in one or more of our guidelines pertaining to the establishment of encyclopedic notability. See also WP:NCHURCH.